b4tn
Valuable Member
I always wanted to try a pico reef but maintaining my current 75 mixed reef seems like a full time job and I just wasn’t sure I was up to maintaining 2 tanks. I ran across @brandon429 thread
www.reef2reef.com
Reading through that and looking at some other builds I got to thinking. I already have a salt mixing station with 30 gallons of saltwater on hand any time. if all I have to do is literally lift the rock structure out, dump the water, and refill... this might not be to hard. On top of that, on such a small scale it’s really not that expensive. So I got to planning. I picked up the following
ABI 12 watt PAR 38 lamp (Santa, AKA my son, brought this to me)
I used all my coupons and discounts at PetSmart and picked up the following for $20:
Tetra HT30 preset heater (in testing it holds the heat steady at 79.9 degrees)
Tetra whisper 40 air pump with air valve
I also picked up a 2 gallon cookie jar at target that was on sale for $17.99
And last and probably the hardest part.. I got a 100 watt mother daughter floor lamp from Home Depot for $25. I stopped at goodwill, Lowe’s, home goods, and Walmart trying to find something inexpensive that would work and settled on the one from Home Depot because it was easiest to modify.
The rest of stuff, air line, fittings, 3/8 tubing, rock, and sand I had laying around in my lab (the garage)
First I took some rocks and sand that’s been living in my sump and pieced together a structure shape I liked. I used JB water weld that I had in the garage and zip tied the rocks to hold them together till it set.
The airline I just zip tied to the plastic parts of the heater and laid the line around the left side of the jar. I have a T fitting on the bottom to help with the angles and a check valve on the line down by the air pump to prevent back siphoning
I used some left over 3/8 hose from another project and split it in half. I used the already curved shape of the hose to my advantage and it snapped in place like it belonged there. I left about a 1/4” gap for the heater wire and airline.
Now the hard part. My wife is picky and since this is going in her kitchen it has to look nice. I did not want the full lamp but could not find anything under $30 that did not look like a science project. So I Broke out my multimeter, soldering iron, and reverse engineered the Home Depot light
Basically I removed the top 3 sections of tubing and cut the wire. Since they where tied together at the upper light socket they needed spliced together.
And the end result. It should be cycled already but I am going to go slow anyway. Right now it’s got a piece of GSP and a mushroom rock from my main tank. They are still pretty ticked off going from ultra high flow to low flow but they should come around eventually. I plan to add a war coral in the bottom, some birds nest, Montipora, and stylo in the near future. I will update the thread as i add coral and it matures.
Why its easier to grow sps in a fishbowl than in a normal reef tank
http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/369846-pongpits-2gal-pico-its-a-13-months-vase（update2016108）/ these threads show some real changes in the hobby. literally reefs in goldfish bowls and the like...
www.reef2reef.com
Reading through that and looking at some other builds I got to thinking. I already have a salt mixing station with 30 gallons of saltwater on hand any time. if all I have to do is literally lift the rock structure out, dump the water, and refill... this might not be to hard. On top of that, on such a small scale it’s really not that expensive. So I got to planning. I picked up the following
ABI 12 watt PAR 38 lamp (Santa, AKA my son, brought this to me)
I used all my coupons and discounts at PetSmart and picked up the following for $20:
Tetra HT30 preset heater (in testing it holds the heat steady at 79.9 degrees)
Tetra whisper 40 air pump with air valve
I also picked up a 2 gallon cookie jar at target that was on sale for $17.99
And last and probably the hardest part.. I got a 100 watt mother daughter floor lamp from Home Depot for $25. I stopped at goodwill, Lowe’s, home goods, and Walmart trying to find something inexpensive that would work and settled on the one from Home Depot because it was easiest to modify.
The rest of stuff, air line, fittings, 3/8 tubing, rock, and sand I had laying around in my lab (the garage)
First I took some rocks and sand that’s been living in my sump and pieced together a structure shape I liked. I used JB water weld that I had in the garage and zip tied the rocks to hold them together till it set.
The airline I just zip tied to the plastic parts of the heater and laid the line around the left side of the jar. I have a T fitting on the bottom to help with the angles and a check valve on the line down by the air pump to prevent back siphoning
I used some left over 3/8 hose from another project and split it in half. I used the already curved shape of the hose to my advantage and it snapped in place like it belonged there. I left about a 1/4” gap for the heater wire and airline.
Now the hard part. My wife is picky and since this is going in her kitchen it has to look nice. I did not want the full lamp but could not find anything under $30 that did not look like a science project. So I Broke out my multimeter, soldering iron, and reverse engineered the Home Depot light
Basically I removed the top 3 sections of tubing and cut the wire. Since they where tied together at the upper light socket they needed spliced together. And the end result. It should be cycled already but I am going to go slow anyway. Right now it’s got a piece of GSP and a mushroom rock from my main tank. They are still pretty ticked off going from ultra high flow to low flow but they should come around eventually. I plan to add a war coral in the bottom, some birds nest, Montipora, and stylo in the near future. I will update the thread as i add coral and it matures.
